Gal Mor’s article on YNet asks if fauxtography is going to be par for the course in conflicts of the future? I wouldn’t be surprised. But I think it would be worth our whiles to look into the past as well. My guess is that many famous war photographs pre-Photoshop were faux in their own way (staged), even famous ones like the Robert Capa dying soldier in the Spanish Civil War and the napalmed child in Vietnam. We all know Mohammed al-Doura was a complete phony. No one needed to Photoshop that.
It’s also true that much regular text reporting is often faux, as we know (naux?). And we have learned that the vast percentage of war video footage comes from the same source and is therefore tilted it the same direction. What are we to make of all this? Are we all living in a false reality? Pretty much, apparently, and it’s not just the normal solipsism we discover as adolescents. One of the few good things to come out of the Israel-Hezbollah War was further acknowledgment of this deception. The nature of news is changing. Few people believe in news organizations as “authorities” any more. The New York Times, as we knew it, is dead. So, to a greater or lesser degree, are its cohorts. We may be moving toward an era in which the most respected news sources are the ones that most honestly admit their biases and make no pretense whatsoever of complete objectivity.
I have been involved in this change, to my own small extent, with the evolution of Pajamas Media. It is now getting closer to what some of us envisioned it to be in the beginning ( a couple of years ago when some bloggers began talking to each other), but it is still a ways off. It’s a process, like most other things of interest. For the first time since we started I am away on a vacation (well, sort of) in the Canadian Rockies and able to look at the the Pajamas site from afar, somewhat more the way a news consumer does. Over the next few days I may learn some things, I couldn’t understand as easily at close hand. We shall see. We shall also see if I can get a photograph of an elk. If not, I shall have to Photoshop it.
UPDATE: Of course the photo above was Robert Capa, not Robert Frank, as several have pointed out to me. Perhaps I shouldn’t be posting such long screeds while jetlagged and supposedly beginning a short vacation. Also, of the photos mentioned aboved, the one of Kim Phuc in Vietnam remains under dispute. Still, the overall point holds.
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15 Comments
1. chuck:Robert Frank? Did you mean Robert Capa?
Aug 17, 2006 - 9:10 pm 2. Ron:Roger, could you please help me out with my problem? I have been taking Journalism and Photoshop courses for several years now and can’t make up my mind whether to be a famous war correspondent/photographer who wins the Pulitzer Prize for great war pictures or a counterfeiter. AP has offered me a job in Lebanon but says that I can work out of my house in Long Beach. The counterfeiting job entails a move but the money is great. What do you think I should do?
Aug 17, 2006 - 11:24 pm 3. Roger:Hcuk, of course it’s Capa. I shouldn’t be writing such long posts while exhausted and jetlagged.
Aug 18, 2006 - 5:39 am 4. Plainslow:The Belmont Club linked this speech by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Aug 18, 2006 - 6:08 am 5. Vulgorilla:from Harvard in 1978. The whole speech is great, but especially on point with this conversation is the section on “The Direction of the Press”. And remember, written in 1978.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
With the likes of Al-Reuters and Associated Phables (AP) at least one now knows which news (read propaganda) organizations to stay away from if one wants to know what is really happening on the battlefield. The problem, as I see it, is that the “Press” has ceased to have any value for me, and I suspect a lot of other folks as well. Because of that, I don’t read, listen, or view any of the old MSM – new TSM (Terrorist Supporting Media), and as a consequence, I am ignorant of any advertising which is part of it. Something for advertisers to start to contemplate very seriously.
Aug 18, 2006 - 6:57 am 6. tsol:Even true photographs can be made to lie!
(Check Neo-Neocon’s take here).
Aug 18, 2006 - 7:04 am 7. waterdragon52:Roger:
I am not familiar with the Robert Capa photo, but remember well the image of that young Vietnamese girl, running, stripped naked after the Napalming of her village and don’t know what “photoshopping” or staging could have been involved.
FYI, that child later immigrated to Canada and became a citizen, so I don’t think she or her parents were Viet Cong sympathizers.
Aug 18, 2006 - 9:24 am 8. cathyf:The thing which is really amazing is that the MSM doesn’t seem to understand just how thin their credibility was to begin with. Everyone who shops in the supermarket knows that photos can be faked. We’ve seen the 2-headed pig-boy, the demon in the 9/11 smoke, George H.W. with the space alien, Ross Perot with the same space alien, etc., etc., etc. And The Weekly World News, The National Enquirer, The Star are all much better at it — how did the MSM think that they could compete with the MUM (made-up media) in a market niche that the established MUM already has vast experience and complete domination of?
cathy
Aug 18, 2006 - 11:26 am 9. Flying Rodent:Roger,
Regarding the famous photo of Kim Phuc:
I’ve seen her being interviewed on TV and she was quite clear about what happened to her. I’m very interested to hear what reasons you have for believing that the shot may have been ‘faux’, ‘under dispute’ or ’staged’ in some way.
I understand the point you’re making, since I’m aware that photographs of corpses were posed in both the American Civil War and World War I. That did not change the fact that both were horrific bloodbaths.
I am, however, rather dubious about your premise – you seem to imply that we are living in some matrix-like other reality where civilians who have been killed by us or our allies do not, in fact, exist.
To my knowledge, the fact that hundreds of innocent Lebanese were killed in the recent hostilities is thus far undisputed.
Or have I misread your post?
Aug 18, 2006 - 3:02 pm 10. triticale:“Robert Frank” probably comes from conflating Robert Capa with Frank Capra, as I did until a quick googling. An image search for * capra war * in fact produces the photo in quastion as its first hit because Capra made use of it. For those unfamiliar with it, it shows a man wearing a white shirt and a rig which looks like suspenders, with arms outstretched and a rifle in one hand. It appears as if he had just been shot a moment earlier. Very dramatic, but not much real information in it.
Yes, Flying Rodent, it is true that many Lebenese who were not directly responsible for the rocket attacks on Israeli civilians died as a result of those attacks having been launched from in their midst.
Aug 18, 2006 - 4:23 pm 11. Pooh:“Also, of the photos mentioned aboved, the one of Kim Phuc in Vietnam remains under dispute”
And you imagine that the authenticity of Robert Capa’s “Falling Soldier” is not in dispute?
PROVING THAT ROBERT CAPA’S “FALLING SOLDIER” IS GENUINE: A DETECTIVE STORY
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/capa_r.html
Aug 18, 2006 - 4:25 pm 12. mezzrow:Forwarding an important message to Roger:
Put the camera down, as it is not in conformity to my theory, which is mine, and is the theory that I devised myself.
Anne Elk
Aug 18, 2006 - 5:27 pm 13. Luther McLeod:Flying Rodent, please find some cheese.
triticale answered you well enough I believe, but I must add, have you seen photos of the Israeli CIVILIAN casualties. I will answer for you. No, you have not. AP, UPI nor none the rest see fit to publish those photos. I wonder why?
Aug 18, 2006 - 7:12 pm 14. Ron:Reuters just called and wants my “little girl being napalmed by Jews while laughingî picture. They have insulted me by offering but a pittance for what this is worth; itís a real mouth frother. Roger, this is real Pulitzer stuff, her hair is on fire and you can see the Israeli flag in the background. A Walter Duranty type front-page, lots of money for this one, should start a couple of wars. I need an agent can you suggest one?
Aug 19, 2006 - 11:12 am 15. Cave Bear:I was wondering if anyone would bring up the Eddie Adams photo. Even the article linked to in tsol’s post does not tell the whole story. I saw an interview with Adams some years ago, and he stated that the main reason that General Loan shot that VC was because the Commie s.o.b. just just killed Loan’s best friend along with his (the friend’s) entire family.
But needless to say, that part of the story never got out, certainly not through the LSM.
Yeah, war sucks. And yes, Lebanese civilians were killed in at least some of the Israeli air strikes. But the sad simple difference between those air strikes and the Hezbollah rockets (and likewise that VC so-called “captain” Loan busted the cap on) is that the Israelis were not deliberately targeting those civilians. They were aiming for the Hezbos and their arms caches, period. And those civilians were given ample warning to get the hell out of Dodge before the IAF came calling.
On the other hand, the Hezbos WERE deliberately targeting civilians in Israel (again, just as that VC deliberately murdered that man’s family, and for the same reason, terror).
But just like the true story behind that photo of Gen. Loan or the faux photos of “Green Helmet” and the dead child, the MSM isn’t going to tell you the whole story, such as why the Hezbollah terrorists found it necessary to hide behind women and children, or why the Lebanese civilians didn’t leave the area while they had the chance.
Funny how the Lefties and their terrorist fellow travelers don’t have a problem with killing innocents….as long as it is the “correct” ones being killed…
Aug 19, 2006 - 3:19 pm